The Napoleonic Wars

The Napoleonic Wars were massive in their geographic scope, ranging, as far as Britain was concerned, over all of the five continents. They were massive, too, in terms of expense. From 1793 to the Battle of Waterloo in June 1815 the wars cost Britain more than £1,650,000,000. Only 25 percent of this sum was raised by government loans, the rest coming largely from taxation, not least from the income tax that was introduced in 1798. But the wars were massive most of all in terms of manpower. Between 1789 and 1815 the British army had to expand more than sixfold, to about a quarter of a million men. The Royal Navy, bedrock of British defense, aggression, trade, and empire, grew further and faster still. Before the wars it had employed 16,000 men; by the end of them, it employed more than 140,000. Because there was an acute danger between 1797 and 1805 that France would invade Britain, the civil defense force also had to be expanded. The militia was increased, and by 1803 more than 380,000 men were acting as volunteers in home-based cavalry and infantry regiments. In all, one in four adult males in Britain may have been in uniform by the early 19th century.

Despite these financial and military exertions, British governments found it extremely difficult to defeat France. In part this was because Pitt the Younger’s abilities were more suited to peace than to war. But the main reason the conflict was so protracted was France’s overwhelming military superiority on land. The historian Paul Kennedy has written of British and French power in this period:

Like the whale and the elephant, each was by far the largest creature in its own domain. But British control of the sea routes could not by itself destroy the French hegemony in Europe, nor could Napoleon’s military mastery reduce the islanders to surrender.

The first coalition of anti-French states, consisting of Britain, Russia, Prussia, Spain, Holland, and Austria, disintegrated by 1796. A British expeditionary force to aid Flanders and Holland was defeated, and Holland was occupied by the French. By 1797 the cost of maintaining its own forces and subsidizing those of its European allies had brought Britain to the verge of bankruptcy. For a time the Bank of England suspended payments in cash.

The British response to these developments was to concentrate on home defense and to consolidate its imperial and naval assets. Britain won a string of important naval victories in 1797, and in 1798 at the Battle of the Nile, Nelson defeated the French fleet anchored off Egypt, thereby safeguarding British possessions in India. Pitt also tried to solve the problem of Ireland. In 1801 the Act of Union took effect amalgamating Ireland with Great Britain and creating the United Kingdom. The Dublin Parliament ceased to exist, and Ireland’s Protestant voters were allowed to return 100 MPs to Westminster. Pitt had hoped to sweeten the union by accompanying it with Roman Catholic emancipation, that is, by allowing Irish Catholics to vote and hold state office if they possessed the necessary property qualifications. George III opposed this concession, however, and Catholics were not admitted to full British citizenship until 1829. Pitt resigned and was succeeded as first minister by Henry Addington, the deeply conservative son of a successful doctor. It was his administration that signed the short-lived Treaty of Amiens with France in 1802.

War broke out again in May 1803. Once again, Britain demonstrated its power at sea but, until 1809, was unable to win substantial victories on land. Its fleet captured St. Lucia, Tobago, Dutch Guiana, the Cape of Good Hope, French Guiana, Java, Martinique, and other West Indian and African territories. Most importantly, in October 1805 Nelson defeated the French and Spanish fleets at Trafalgar, thereby preventing an invasion of Britain. Napoleon, however, inflicted serious military defeats on the Austrians, Prussians, and Russians and invaded Spain. At one stage Britain’s only remaining European allies were Sweden, Portugal, Sicily, and Sardinia; in short, the country was without any significant allies at all. Political leadership was uneven and sometimes weak, and the long duration of the war and its damaging effects on trade aroused increasing criticism at home. Pitt had resumed his post as chancellor of the Exchequer and first lord of the Treasury in May 1804, but he died worn out by work and drink in January 1806. None of the three men who succeeded him as premier, William Wyndham Grenville, Baron Grenville (1806–07), William Henry Cavendish Bentinck, duke of Portland (1807–09), and Spencer Perceval (1809–12), was able to establish himself in power for very long or to capture the public imagination.

Yet the war began to turn in Britain’s favour in 1809, in large part because of Napoleon’s strategic mistakes. When the Spanish rebelled against French rule, substantial British armed forces were dispatched to assist them under the command of Arthur Wellesley, later duke of Wellington. Spain’s new anti-French posture meant that Spain was once again open to British manufactured goods, as were its colonies in Latin America. For a time this helped to reduce the commercial community’s criticism of the conduct of the war. But demands for peace revived during the slump of 1811–12 and intensified when British relations with the United States, a vitally important market, began to deteriorate. One of the main irritants was the so-called Orders in Council, prohibiting neutral powers (like the United States) from trading with France. In 1812 commercial lobbies in Liverpool, Sheffield, Leeds, and Birmingham succeeded in getting the orders repealed, an indication of the growing political weight exercised by the manufacturing interest in Britain. Although this failed to prevent the Anglo-American War of 1812, neither Britain’s trade nor its war efforts in Europe was seriously damaged by that conflict. Russia’s break with Napoleon in 1812 opened up large markets for British goods in the Baltic and in northern Europe.

From 1812 onward Napoleon’s defeat was merely a matter of time. In June 1813 Wellington defeated the French army in Spain at Victoria. The forces of Austria, Sweden, Prussia, and Russia expelled the French from Germany in the Battle of Leipzig (October 1813). This victory allowed Wellington, who had already crossed the Pyrenees, to advance upon Bayonne and Toulouse. Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh, the secretary of state for foreign affairs, played the leading part in negotiating the Treaty of Chaumont in March 1814, which clarified allied war aims (including the expulsion of Napoleon), tightened allied unity, and made provision for a durable European settlement. The subsequent squabbles over the spoils of war were interrupted for a time when Napoleon escaped from his genteel exile on Elba and fought his last campaign from March to June 1815. Although his final defeat at Waterloo was accomplished by the allied armies, Britain secured prime credit. This textbook victory was to help Britain dominate Europe and much of the world for the next 100 years.

1Active members as of December 2013, including 89 hereditary peers, 646 life peers, and 25 archbishops and bishops.

2Church of England “established” (protected by the state but not “official”); Church of Scotland “national” (exclusive jurisdiction in spiritual matters per Church of Scotland Act 1921); no established church in Northern Ireland or Wales.

Official name

United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland

Form of government

constitutional monarchy with two legislative houses (House of Lords [7601]; House of Commons [650])

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